


Ouroboros' Tail

by BigEvilShine



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, No Smut, Omega Armitage Hux, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-05-27 15:27:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15027593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigEvilShine/pseuds/BigEvilShine
Summary: Snoke falls split in two and with him Kylo's chains. He leaves the First Order and the Rebellion, the Light and the Dark, and the universe proves her sense of humor when his equilibrium has green eyes.





	1. Chapter 1

Kylo had not betrayed the First Order. Neither did he fulfill the girl’s naïve desire to return to the Light and his mother’s side. When Snoke’s body dropped with it fell Kylo's chains and desire to anchor himself to another being or concept ever again. 

So Kylo left. 

The Order, the Knights, the Light and the Dark. 

The girl raged at him for the brief time before he could untangle their paths, spitting curses and tearing at him with his dead name and accusations of cowardice. He felt nothing for her insults, not from maturity but from exhaustion. He had nothing left to give after the decimation of his character that was the removal of Snoke's hold. The normal fury that accompanied insults against his person was all used up – gone. In its place instead lived an apathy.

That he had wasted the first thirty years of his life, suffered and striven for nothing, was more on his mind than the invented battles of good and evil the girl kept insisting ruled their lives. 

He left, disappearing into anonymity with the aid of stolen ships and mind tricks. That his existence had always remained more legend than fact aided in his disappearance and that he had lived primarily under his allegorically crafted helm gave him an unbridled ordinariness without it. 

Months into his exile, abandonment of duty, and journey to find himself Kylo was docked at a station in Hutt Space drinking watered down overpriced liquor in a bar that smelled like standing water and the ammonia of piss. A sudden familiar scent and then an orange flight suit clad arm slid onto the bar top beside him. 

“Heard the Order’s been running scared since three of the snakes running it lost their heads.” 

Kylo didn’t look at him, did not need to when he knew the stink of the man who was the son to Leia he could never be. His grip tightened over the bottle in his hand. “Not my problem.”

“Really? Not worried your skinny general might hunt you for killing his master?”

“No.”

Poe tapped his fingers in a roll over the bar, humming. Kylo could feel the mix of frustration and medley of threads the pilot was struggling to weave into leading questions. If his ship weren’t still undergoing maintenance and repair Kylo would have left already. 

“They do seem to have been caught with their dicks in their hands, huh? Suppose that general of yours isn’t much of an issue anyway. Word going around the comms is he’s been replaced, we’ve been trying to guess what system they’ll harass next.”

“It won’t happen. They’ll pull back to the Unknown Regions, lick their wounds and rebuild the losses in personnel,” Kylo didn’t have any particular reason to let the Resistance know this aside from a private fantasy that the two factions might kill themselves over their war and leave him alone. 

“How do you figure?” Poe wasn’t a good enough spy or feeler to keep the eagerness from his voice and the testosterone from his scent. Kylo grimaced, shuffling in place and forcing another inch between them. 

“I just do.” He didn’t feel it important to mention the mandatory wastes of time he and Hux spent conferring with the holograms of High Command, watching the remnants of the Empire squabble in their straining uniforms with their jowls quivering as they postured. Commonly Kylo used this time to meditate or sleep under the privacy of his helm, but one session he had caught a wisp of thought soaked in humor. Chasing it he found Hux, the general likewise as bored and hateful of the old vultures leeching off of his work. He had been entertaining himself with smug thoughts of his own importance and authority in the First Order’s fate, guessing what avenues High Command would take should he ever disappear. It was from him Kylo had lifted the plan. 

Poe didn’t need to know. 

“Huh. Well, I guess you would know. What do you figure happened to your ginger general? We’ve been keeping an ear out for public executions but haven’t heard anything, but nothing’s come out over any resignation or step downs, voluntary or otherwise.”

The Resistance vastly over estimated his involvement with the First Order’s army and petty politics if they thought he had an answer to that. It was hard to imagine a First Order divorced from Hux. The general had though, more than once Kylo had felt the ache of paranoia during idle moments in the man’s company. Hux had made enemies during his climb in command and knew the hounds were nipping at his heels ready to make a meal of him the moment his stride faltered. The general was well aware of the target on his back but to keep his assassination or removal from command secret, to not even publicize an excuse for his disappearance during a time of vulnerability only raised suspicions. There was something else to uncover there, something that Hux would have noticed and tucked away for later use, but this was no longer Kylo’s life and he let that wonder part from his mind as spider’s silk in the breeze. 

An alert on his commlink and Kylo left the bar with a wave in the bartender’s direction to convince them he had paid and not another look for the overconfident pilot. With his ship ready and prepped Kylo left the station. He drifted for a few days, finding two new trackers on his ship and immediately venting them into space. With no goals or obligations, no self destructive journeys of personal self growth and vengeance, Kylo felt as close to balanced as he ever had. 

It was not peace or contentment that took him out here n the wilds of open space. No, such feelings were not for him. It seemed without the weight of his bloodline’s legacy, the pressure of other minds on his, or the spindly grip of Snoke’s hold that he was forced into an ever shifting equilibrium. He was a pitcher of ice water and oil allowed to rest rather than be stolen and shaken and passed from hand to hand. 

Out here, in the void, the differences in himself ceased to conflict. He was many parts of one whole. Neither Ben nor Kylo but something better, maybe. 

Yet it seemed in all things he lacked conviction.

He could hardly stand himself after a fortnight’s time alone. He ached like an open wound, bleeding madness and a terrible hunger for the distraction of companionship. Times like these he remembered how he’d preyed on the girl’s deepest fear of abandonment and her depthless loneliness and nearly thought himself unforgivable. So once more, just as he had time and time again, he broke the cycle of estrangement from the galaxy at large and settled his ship at the docks of the nearest and seediest port to fulfill his weakness for company. 

Maybe if he had known who he was to find at this port he would never have docked. 

# ...

At first he thought his eyes deceiving. 

A certain madness was not uncommon to space farers, especially those that traveled alone. Kylo was into his second day ground side, meandering through the markets when he saw a flash of pale skin the color of a fish’s belly and the glint of muddy lichen green eyes. The figure ducked back beneath their drooping gray hood, stepping away from the table of ill begotten medicine to flee the seller’s tent, but not before inhaling a sharp breath. 

So, recognition. 

It was no trick of the eye. 

Kylo indulged Hux’s dance of disappearance, token resistance that it was. The moment they had laid eyes on one another the fate of their encounter had been decided, perhaps even before. Maybe they were always destined to find each other again, unmoored from their faction and leader and left to drift as common detritus. Kylo allowed the chase until his patience began to burn and swiftly he ended the pursuit, lunging for the other man and brushing his consciousness into modified slumber. Gentling the weight into his arms Kylo returned to his ship, nose twitching at the peculiar change in the general's scent from antibacterial soap and First Order laundry detergent to something more human and so unfamiliar. And the stink of blood. 

Injured, then. In hiding from the style of his clothing. Looking for supplies for himself at that tent. 

Laying out the general’s body on his bunk Kylo began removing clothes from his slight frame. He had always been aware how small Hux was, especially on the days he forwent the great coat and paraded his small waistline and svelte build in the flattering shine of his black uniform and cinched belt. Today proved no different as the poncho and tunic were tossed aside to expose the smooth expanse of unblemished skin. Kylo stalled for a moment, indulging in a mindless urge to press his hand into the soft belly exposed like a bowl of cream. Shaking his head he continued onto removing Hux’s boots, barely catching one before it jerked up to meet his chin. 

“What are you doing?” Hux spat, rousing with a violence. Kylo frowned, looking up at the unhappy moue. For a moment his attention caught on those lips, mauve and full bodied with a prim curve. Quickly he met Hux’s gaze. 

“You’re bleeding. I was going to tend to it.”

Hux grunted, squirming and trying to pull free from Kylo who simply tightened his grip over booted ankles. “That is unnecessary I’m quite capable.” As he spoke something reverberated in him, an echoing timber that struck like a bell for deception. Kylo’s eyes narrowed, jaw clenching and he barely kept his grip from clenching hard enough to form bruise anklets. 

“You’re hiding something.”

Hux stilled, glancing away quickly before looking back at where Kylo kneeled at his feet. When he made no more moves of resistance Kylo continued to disrobe the slimmer male, tossing aside his boots with socks quick to follow. Briskly jerking down his pants left Hux only in his shorts and finally the wound made itself known. It was a graze on his calf, cauterized and blackened at the edges – blaster. 

“What happened?” Kylo knew better than to ask someone as secretive and insecure as Hux but here in his ship, where he could sometimes find something like peace of mind, he dared to push the matter. Getting to his feet he pulled the first aid kit from where it latched to the wall of the room before returning to kneel at Hux’s feet. 

“You first,” Hux muttered. He kept still while Kylo swabbed a cotton pad soaked in alcohol, sterilizing and lifting filth and the clothing fibers that had stuck into the gummy scabs. The general’s leg twitched when Kylo scrubbed until there was fresh blood flow, holding a new pad in place with one thumb while he tore open an adequately sized bacta patch. 

“Killed Snoke. Left the Order, been travelling since.”

“That’s it? No running back to mummy and crying into her skirts?” Hux hissed when Kylo applied the patch with unnecessary pressure. 

“The Resistance would be even less of a home for me than the First Order. I no longer have the desire to live for the expectations of others,” Kylo ran a forefinger over the edges of the patch to be sure of the seal. His nose twitched at the mix of bacta, fresh blood, and something he couldn’t place. “Your turn.”

“Fine. Can’t see how this could possibly matter to you. As you’re well aware I was living on borrowed time when it came to those under my command who served under the Empire. They didn’t envy my position when I served alongside you and Snoke, who would?” Hux scoffed. “With both obstacles removed it was but a waiting game until I was toppled through coup, mutiny, or classical assassination. When it became too dangerous to stay, once High Command began making moves without me and were clearly consulting their general elect behind my back, I cut my losses. Circumstance saw fit to send some of my plans pear shaped but I sorted it out. Satisfied?” Hux drawled. 

He hadn’t expected Hux to be so forthcoming and knew he had woven a tapestry of truths and lies of omission. Parsing the careful threadwork Kylo found the strands that most shivered in discontent as they were forced to house more meanings than one. He took a breath, suddenly realizing he had drifted to sit between the general’s slim and spread thighs. 

“Elaborate on how it became too dangerous to stay.”

“It means what it means, my life and body were at risk – “

“Body?” Kylo’s brow furrowed at the ache around that word choice, the buzz high pitched and wailing in the Force like a wounded animal. Pinning Hux with a look he saw spots of color building in his cheeks, his skin prickling with sweat as his secret was gradually being brought to the forefront. Kylo clamped his hands over Hux’s knees, holding tightly when the general seemed near to bolting. 

“My p-person, I didn’t want to be maimed or –“ his stress scented sweat mixed into the stale recycled air and the sting of iron and antiseptics and something else. Something good, something that was pulling Kylo closer, something –

“Omega.”

The realization hung like a weight between them, Hux’s narrow chest rising and falling as he tried to calm his anxiety in controlled breaths. 

“After the desolation to our forces over Crait we lost the ability to reinforce hold over planets and supply routes. We hemorrhaged resources including medications. I had a hoard of suppressants on top of scent neutralizing sprays in the event of a siege, but even that ran dry after so long.” Hux shivered as Kylo’s grip shifted, fingers digging into the backs of his knees. “My scent was becoming an issue, no one respects an omega’s command – I wasn’t going to be preyed upon by my own men, I left. Before someone could try and claim me. I had to,” he grit out the final words, the ring of it that of a mantra that Hux must have been telling himself time and again since his defection. 

“You didn’t want to be bred,” Kylo said. 

“No,” Hux straightened his spine, rigid and proud even as Kylo’s fattening pupils went unnoticed. “It started with the alphas lingering in meetings, lieutenants standing too near. When I realized some were going out of their way to pass by my rooms I didn’t dare test my luck further.”

“No,” Kylo murmured, unabashedly staring at the groin framed between the soft skinned thighs near his face, “I can’t imagine you would.” This close he could scent the subtle pheromones, taste the delicate flavor left thin and only now slowly growing robust after decades of suppressant use. He swallowed, suddenly aware of the runny saliva pooling in his mouth. 

“…Kylo?” Hux whispered. Fear spiked a blade of grass into that scent and Kylo was lost. Digging blunt nails into the soft undersides of Hux’s legs he tugged him forward and buried his face into the soft mound of the omega’s genitals. Distantly over the thrum of blood in his ears and feel of his cock thickening in the confines of his clothes Kylo heard Hux’s shocked yelp and felt his fingers yank and scrabble at his hair. The sting was muted in favor of Kylo’s heavy snuffling breaths in the sweet center of the general.  


“G-get off!” Hux’s yip went unheard.

Kylo moaned into the fabric, nuzzling under Hux’s balls to feel the weight over his nose and press his lips into his soft perineum. Kylo clamped his hands over Hux’s hips and groaned, dragging the tip of his nose up the seam where pelvis met thigh until Kylo closed his mouth over plushness of Hux’s cock. 

Kylo filled up with every breath of Hux’s scent, higher thoughts foaming up into a floating haze. Under his tongue Hux’s cock began to harden, rising up to greet his laving even as its owner panted and yanked on Kylo’s hair, having little effect other than to elicit moans and twitches in the claustrophobic hold of Kylo’s trousers. Then streaks of hot cold tore him from temple to cheek and in the moment he flinched back a foot crashed into his chest and forced space between them. 

“What the fuck, Ren. What the actual fuck,” Hux’s voice trembled, eyes glassy and wet and so overwhelmed. Kylo huffed, barely able to look away from the enticing meet of the general’s thighs. Licking his lips he snorted to dissipate the musk, shaking his head as if it could lessen the fog.

“I didn’t know you’re omega,” he husked, clearing his throat at the roughness. 

“You assault every omega you find?” Hux still sounded just this side of shrill even as he fought for control of the situation and himself, closing his thighs best he could and shrinking back. Kylo growled at the accusation but didn’t push it, knowing his reaction was irrational. He blamed the episode on it having been years since he’d last scented clean, fertile, human omega. That he couldn’t remember anyone’s scent being so compelling must be a sign of poor memory and nothing more. 

“You were looking for suppressants earlier,” Kylo realized. The blaster wound would have healed ugly but if kept clean the body would have dealt with it. He didn’t realize he was leaning in closer again until the pressure of Hux’s pale foot turned bruising. 

“If you had been listening to a word I said that should have been obvious!” Hux shouted. Kylo grimaced, vastly preferring the frantic breathy sounds from moments ago over this. The First Order’s restrictions over presenting secondary sexes were made for a machine, to equalize and control all parts without accounting for individuality. Kylo was exempt from those regulations as Snoke’s apprentice, the medication as likely to dull his emotions and ferocity with the Force as it seemed to neuter the alpha officers. The suppressants were as good as chemical castration for some, leaving many with impotence and others with lasting reproductive issues even after ending their prescriptions. That fear was not one he felt in Hux, no the drive to return his chemically induced state said otherwise – and it wasn’t the normal sense of lost control that sent the general into his tail spins.

“Why bother with that before finding a better disguise?” Kylo asked. 

“I was wearing a hood,” Hux snapped, looking away. That was not a lie but it ached in the man’s aura, prickling with admission that his priorities were not in the right order and Hux had been well aware of that. Kylo pressed on the bubbled pressure of the general’s mind, idly stroking the slim calf still holding him away as he probed. Fear then, so potent that his secondary sex would be uncovered and exploited that it had knocked his orderly sense of purpose and practicality askew. Forcing himself deeper, sinking liquid in sand, Kylo saw the reason why. 

A young Armitage, a child with dull eyes and an empty stomach, stood obediently in front of his father’s desk with the results of his secondary sex testing laid out between them. The commandant grimaced, tossing away the report with disgust and glowering down at the boy who kept his eyes fixed forward and hands clasped behind his back in an imitation of the posture his older self would go on to perfect. The memory was flooded full of humiliation and shame, his father telling him what omegas were good for – fucking and whoring and spreading their legs. Armitage trembled, confused by what he did not understand and scared of what he almost could. Then the commandant brought up images on his monitor, and Kylo understood exactly what drove Hux’s irrationality. 

“That’s not how the majority of the universe operates,” Kylo pulled away from Hux’s mind, gentle enough not to leave lasting damage but still painful in the way Kylo was by nature. The general flinched, wincing again once the connection was fully severed and clasping at his head in a futile attempt to assuage some of the ache. 

“He would not have bothered wasting his time doctoring images to scare me,” Hux said, and he was right. The most effort the commandant could muster for his son was creating a folder of images depicting mutilated omegas with spreader bars piercing their ankles, teeth removed and jaws held open with gags, arms riddled with track marks from injected synthetic heat boosters, of bodies chained to walls and beds and kept for breeding. That, and raising his fists against a Hux not even five years old. 

“That’s not common treatment of your kind. He showed you that to control your sexuality,” Kylo did not know why he was arguing the matter, he did not care really. Hux went rigid, caught off guard, and that was all Kylo needed. Lunging he grabbed Hux, climbing over top and pushing the thinner male down with the weight of his body. Hux yelled, legs kicking out and knocking his pointy fists fruitlessly against the alpha. Hux was crushed into the thin foam of the bunk, gasping as his chest compressed under Kylo’s mass and the roughness with which he buried his face into the crook of Hux’s neck. Here the scent was heady but not as overwhelming as that which perfumed his groin. 

“Bet you’re untouched. Never let an alpha scent you, fuck you,” Kylo groaned, licking widely up Hux’s neck. 

“Get off of me you disgusting creature,” Hux spat. 

“Maybe the commandant was right to keep you wary, wouldn’t want someone recognizing you and finding out you’ve got a fertile womb. Would only be fitting to sell you off to the remnants of the New Republic, keep you tied to a bed and bred over and over, replace the lives you took with your failed Starkiller with your own pups – “

“Stop it!” Hux hiccupped, frantic breaths coming quick. Something like burnt plasteel marred Hux’s scent and Kylo blinked, pulling back and looking down at the flushed face and wet eyes of his general. He hadn’t realized the unflappable General Hux was capable of being frightened to tears. In their years together Kylo would rage and threaten and bluster and not once had he seen Hux more than sneer, even when he could feel him thrumming with trepidation. Gently Kylo pulled back, rolling to his side and tugging the stiff omega against his chest.

“Sorry, got carried away,” Kylo muttered, stroking Hux’s flank in what he hoped was a comforting way. 

“You fucking think?” Hux shuddered. Kylo huffed, warm breath disturbing the orange hair on Hux’s nape. They lay together for some time while Hux collected himself, angrily scrubbing at the moisture in his eyes, and Kylo basked in the body heat of another. Noticing the gooseflesh rising on Hux, Kylo struggled out of his fur lined leather jacket and draped it over him – not willing to disrupt their position to free the sheets from beneath them. 

“So, what is the plan here? Kidnap and grope me mentally and physically then get off to your own fantasy of my imprisonment and indefinite abuse?” Hux asked once he was near composed. Kylo shifted, tucking an arm under the general’s head so he could rest on his bicep and tossing his other arm over Hux’s waist. The other did not react but Kylo doubted that was from any true relaxation rather than exhaustion. 

“Didn’t have a plan in mind.”

“Idiot.”

Kylo hummed. 

There had never been a plan, Kylo had not even thought about stealing Hux. This was serendipitous; there was no other name for it and no reason to question the authenticity. Kylo had lived too long not to believe in coincidence and this was so much more than that. A path of puzzle pieces locking together as he walked, the cruelty and kindness and black humor of the fates, he was not one to question it. Hux could not feel the foot fall of such things and could not understand it no matter how in depth or how long Kylo endeavored to explain these things. Instead he pressed closer, hitching a heavy thigh over Hux’s leg and burying his nose in that orange hair. 

“We'll figure it out.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Initially, Hux was disgusted. 

Every meal the villagers invited them to was a mass affair and, in his opinion, far too extravagant for a tiny hamlet of fishermen and trappers. It wouldn’t have been as bad if they would let him choose what to eat but every time he reached for the basket of deboned smoked fish or the shelled crustaceans his hands were swatted away with an exclamation in the local tongue before a fresh leaf loaded with shellfish both raw and with the bone and skin was placed in his lap. Kylo would cast him a pitying or smug look depending on which way the wind blew before tucking into the properly prepared food with not so much as a raised eyebrow from the natives. 

It absolutely irked him. 

Yet such was the way of things since they’d made an emergency landing on the shoreline. He and Kylo had been at each others throats after, minutes away from tearing into each other with nails and teeth accusing the faulty engine equipment’s state of failure as the fault of each other when the first few pale faces emerged from the foggy green tree line. It was luck or fate, or the will of the Force if Kylo was allowed a comment, that they’d found themselves on Arkanis of all accursed worlds and that leading the group of their greeters was a fair haired older woman who took one look at Hux and burst into tears. 

It seems he had an aunt. 

The village was rustic but advanced enough to have a working communication system, short and long range, which allowed Hux to put in a repair order with the nearest garage. It was a fair distance away and would take two months at minimum with the damaged parts having to be ordered out, but the situation wasn’t dire. Hux and Kylo were welcomed with far too many familial touches and smiling faces. It was an absolute trial to endure, he was sure Kylo must have disassociated into a meditative state when a gaggle of stooped old women clucked and pinched at his biceps and dark hair. 

There was another notable matter, the two of them stuck out like stars in the night. For all the similarities he held with his mother’s people Hux towered over them and his red hair shone richer than all their snowy blonds. Yet, the similarities were undeniable. He shared their luminescent pale skin that showed every vein beneath like spider silk as well as their slight frames and long, delicate and clever hands. His aunt in particular was enthusiastic for him, always petting his inner wrists and smiling with tears in her eyes when she held his face between her rough palms and waxed poetic about his mother’s nose and the curve of her lips. 

He had never felt more thankful than when Kylo would butt into their exchanges, the hard musk of him enough to express his displeasure at all the physical affection. His aunt would flicked away her tears and with a sniffle and her light gray eyes turn into something delighted and mischievous at Kylo’s unnecessary possessiveness. The village though small had a higher density of alphas than a regular population of humanoids, though their scents were strange. Easy to brush aside like the rush of river flow parting over rocks whereas Kylo’s lingered like bruises. Thus far none of the alphas took any more of an interest in Hux than the few betas and rarer omegas, all plucking at his hair and grinning with crinkled eyes, chattering pleasantly. 

No, the issue was that for every cup of water given to Kylo, Hux was given a tea brewed from some bitter water plant or sea grass. Each meal Hux was forced to take his time chewing and grinding down fine feathery fish bones so he could safely swallow without damaging his throat while Kylo inhaled his specially prepared food like the great farm animal Hux suspected him of being. Once when they’d been left alone after having hot bowls of some cooked grain topped with chunks of sweet fruit Hux had quickly stolen a spoonful of Kylo’s. While the other man barked and quickly raised his bowl out of reach, shooting Hux a hard frown as he set about scarfing his meal, Hux tested his own and had his suspicions confirmed that even this was made differently for him. He couldn’t figure out why this was, however. Neither he nor Kylo were feeling ill and nothing else hinted at any subtle cues of disrespect. 

He really could not figure it out. 

“You smell good.”

Hux looked up from where he’d been watching the ground, woven reed sandals clapping with a soft sound against the rich, loamy black soil. Kylo was watching him as they trekked back to their guest hut, the last evening light flushing him blue and his eyes catching orange sparks from a far off torch. Hux scoffed, turning back to the well trodden path bare of leaf litter. 

“I should hope so, I just bathed.”

“No,” Kylo refuted with a slow shake of his head, “it’s something else. It’s more you. Potent. As if before this I’ve only smelled you through smoke.”

They turned a bend deeper into the forest, chirping bugs crying loudly as the occasional flying insect winked luminescent in their lazy drifting. Hux supposed that his lifetime of medications was still working through his system and that was what Kylo was getting at, and said as much.

“It’s not only that,” Kylo huffed, tilting his head back to watch the black canopy pass overhead and spy the odd shine of a waning moon. He was frustrated but not at himself or Hux, instead at his tenuous grasp on finer vocabulary and more refined speech. Once he’d been a well educated boy, capable of recalling the purpose of every spoon and fork at a fine meal or the steps of culturally significant dances of seven species. Decades of lurking beneath a helmet and expressing his poetry with the slam and arc of a saber had stripped him of such frivolities. 

“You look better. You’re gaining weight. You don’t look as sunken and thinned like ink dropped in a pot of water. Healthier,” Kylo said. Hux quirked a brow at the other and Kylo sighed at the silent prompt. “You’re more energized, and your sleep patterns have become like clockwork.

"This place is good for you.”

“Oh, so I’m going native am I?” Hux sniped, hearing only that up until now he’d looked a mess of a man and needed others to care for him since he was clearly incapable of doing such for himself. Kylo’s face puckered in annoyance.

“Why do you take everything in the worst possible way?”

“Oh I don’t know, possibly because if I hadn’t learnt to do so in my youth that it is very much likely I wouldn’t be standing here, enjoying the luxury of our squabbling?” he snapped back. Kylo may have rolled his eyes but the night was quick coming and the light little, his possible disrespect hiding in the shadows as he sauntered further down the path. They shared comfortable silence for a time, listening to the thunder from a far off storm that was promised to pass over them during the night and linger far into the next day. 

It wouldn’t disrupt the villagers’ schedules, after all this was Arkanis where crashing clouds and torrential downpours were common and clear skies considered a break in the clouds. Hux had been interested in following after the children that were sent off to harvest algae and other such things from the sea’s tide pools in these morning excursions. If asked why Hux defended it was only sensible to learn the natural growing locations of edible flora and fauna as well as best gathering techniques, but it was a sheer disguise. It was a practice in masochism in truth, a hurt jealousy in his chest that demanded he find a flaw in these children’s seemingly healthy rearing that would make his own the preferred choice. 

The concept, however fantastical and academic, that a chance at a life entrenched in mud and wet sand with adults that might have seen him as a child to nurture and not to mold had been snatched from him was a thought that brought the well in his belly to overflowing with despair.

For himself, for whom he could have been. 

A hand at his back pressed for him to hurry along the path before the rains could catch them. The sudden touch sparked a twitch in his fingers, his mind still acclimatizing to physical interactions that were benevolent and affectionate in their roots. Kylo had been attentive in such ways since they’d begun their stay in the village, likely a reaction to unfamiliar alphas more than out of any deep connection with Hux. 

After reuniting it hadn’t been long before Hux entered the first unmedicated heat of his life. His body was still recovering, hormones imbalanced and instincts confused with the mess he’d made of himself for the last three decades. It had been quick, two days of a heat that left him scraped thin and exhausted into days of bed rest. In his pain he’d welcomed Kylo into their shared bunk, the primordial part of him knowing that an alpha was the only proper relief. Their coupling was painful, Hux’s body barely producing slick and his muscles knotting and cramping with fever while Kylo was too much and too eager. It was neither a satisfying nor fulfilling time and left them both awkward around one another in the following days with not even a heat bond forming to alleviate the carnal and emotional strain of their relationship.

That was both a disappointment and relief. Hux told himself it was a good thing that he wasn’t forced into any bout of disingenuous attachment with this strange reformed Kylo Ren, but his body’s denial of simple pleasures so famously afforded between omegas and alphas was simply one more thing he couldn’t do right. Further proof that he made for a poor omega and that his fate as one was less a fluke of biology and more blackly humored. 

Their cottage was a small affair, formed from sturdy round river stones and mortar with hard timbers. The roof was thatched and overgrown with fluffy greenery and the occasional spot of flowering weeds giving the whole thing a quaint look. The shutters were open, something he and Ren were quick to rectify upon entry to keep the rain outside, as they locked the windows shut. His aunt had laughed when Hux had made a snide comment about the presence of glass, her nose wrinkling and amusement coloring her countenance as she explained the hamlet might live rustically but they were no savages. The majority of them had spent time as contracted skilled laborers in facilities and for businesses in the main cities during the Imperial controlled era of Arkanis, only returning to their native home to avoid trouble when the New Republic made its move.

Kylo took his time crouched in front of the fireplace arranging logs and striking flint and steel until light and warmth filled the space. If Hux were a man who could enjoy creature comforts over the shielding embrace and control of routine he might have enjoyed the entire aesthetic of the cabin. Stone floors and walls with sensible and strong looking furniture that was cushioned with down filled pillows, plenty of furs and quilts stacked in the chests and tossed across the bed and couch. As it was less a home than a hotel room there was no kitchen but that hadn’t been an issue as the entire village seemed chomping at the bit to stuff himself and Kylo full with local cuisine. 

“This planet’s always wet and cold,” Kylo muttered, lifting from where he’d been kneeling at the hearth. Hux scoffed, removing his boots and tucking them by the wall. 

“This region, certainly, the entire planet does not share the same climate. That’s not how planets work, Ren,” he pointed out while removing his outerwear to hang on a hook by the door. He finished securing his coat when a hard wall of heat pressed against his back, moist warm breath passing against his ear and neck. Hux grit his jaw, hand stilling as a thrill sprang like static across their every point of contact. 

“I was going to offer to warm you up,” Kylo murmured, heavy hands landing on his quarry’s hips. The baldness of the statement and forthright intent sparked an abrupt laugh from Hux, his hands falling to hold over Kylo’s and head tilting while Kylo nosed behind his ear and audibly scented like a mutt. 

“Pick that line up from a subadult’s smutty literature you came across? It’s absolutely vexing; I haven’t the faintest how I’ll ever resist you now.” It all would have sounded so much more mature and condescending as he’d intended, a playful but firm push for space, if his breath hadn’t hitched and his voice gone airy while he melted back and allowed the hands to slip around and hold him across the chest and belly. This position lit him up in delight, the feeling of possession appealing to his basest mammalian desires. The ever present musk Kylo exuded thickened in the air, scent sticky and humid as it hung over them and seemingly soaked into Hux’s very being like a body polluted. 

Kylo didn’t deign to answer in favor of licking the sweat from Hux’s throat, a few quick passes of his tongue brushing at the shorter and softer hair at the back of his head in a jumbled impression of grooming. That struck Hux oddly and returned him enough solid sense of self to pull forward and out of the cage of arms and scent. Kylo had stripped down to a sleeveless tunic at some point exposing his pale neck and defined collarbones and arms. It was surprising all over again to see so much of the former Knight’s bare skin. After years of only catching glimpses of the other’s face and hands Hux found he had no immunity and once more had the air knocked from his chest. He barely had time to register the shine of smiling teeth in the firelight before Kylo was upon him. 

But it was wrong.

“Get off you beast,” Hux squirmed out of the other’s embrace, face scrunched at the wet slide from his lips to cheek when he turned his head from Kylo’s amorous fondling. It took a bit of time before the alpha got himself back under control and it wasn’t without extreme complaining sounds. The thought did cross Hux’s mind that Kylo was well behaved if spoiled, though clearly not well trained as evidenced by the fate of their late Supreme Leader. 

Hux grimaced as he stripped down to his shorts, forcefully pushing thoughts of Snoke out of mind while he and Kylo were both not fully soft. 

Arkanis’ cloudy skies suited Hux’s pale skin and the rich supply of fresh and salt water was a luxury he enjoyed after years of measured rations for drinking and bathing and the few months of dehydration he’d fought through on the drier worlds after fleeing this world as a child. What he didn’t enjoy was the ever present chill in the air, how the humidity was always sticky and cool and the only thing that fought off the creeping discomfort was physical labor. Such was not in short supply as there was always much to do to maintain the health of the community, but through physical exertion or not at the end of the day everyone’s skin was still sticky. Hux would have liked to bathe again before bed but the cottage wasn’t designed for such a luxury and they’d been forced to make do at the river with the rest of the villagers. 

This left the sheets they shared at night steeped in both their musks and too awkward to wear over their moist and cold skin in the night lest it chafe and drag. Hux shivered, gooseflesh texturing his pale skin before Kylo dragged their bodies together. The relief was immediate, Kylo’s hot form as relaxing as a warm bath as it melted the tension in his back and his scent settled like protection over his frame. 

He was even able to forgive the firm length pressing against him from behind, given such creature comforts. 

Tomorrow he’d follow the fishermen down to the sea shore and the cove with its stones coated in inches of luminescent, rounded salt formations. His aunt had told him the mineral was significant to their diet while dropping small shards into his warm drink. He certainly had felt better in the past few days, though he hadn’t realized until after Kylo’s comments. Perhaps he’d put some effort into discovering why the salt and bones were so prevalent in the diet of the locals, and attempt mimicking the nutrition with foods from whatever world they both ended up at next. 

Eyes blinking open, Hux saw the shape of Ren’s arm over his chest lined firelight orange. He was warm, indulgent in the sticky discomfort of skin on skin, eager to see the morning. His fingers drifted to trace the other's stony knuckles, breathing the alpha in deeply and letting his eyes slip shut. 

He wouldn’t worry what it meant that he was eager to find his future.


End file.
